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Politicized Society

The Long Shadow of Taiwan's One-Party Legacy

Mikael Mattlin

320 pp., illustratedGovernance in Asia # 1

Available from NIAS Press worldwide

Hardback - 2011, AvailableISBN 978 87 7694 061 4, £50.00

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Paperback - 2011, AvailableISBN 978 87 7694 062 1, £18.99

If you would like to hear from us when a particular book is published, please let us know by sending an e-mail to [email protected] with the words 'pub notice' in the subject line and listing in the main body of the e-mail the title(s) of the books(s) you would like to be told about. We will then e-mail you as soon as the book becomes available.
Alternatively, you could join our mailing list and reveice quarterly updates on all new books, projects under way, conferences where our books can be seen, and other Press news.

Focuses on an under-explored area of democratic transitions, the empirical study of intensely politicized transitional societies.

Argues that the continued strength of the old dominant political party following the transition from one-party rule carries the risk of structural politicization.

Asks how we should grasp a situation where the political practices commonly associated with democracy, such as election campaigning and political media debate, jeopardize the sustainability of democratic politics by the way they are pursued.

Describes how extreme politicization is the main internal threat to the sustainability of Taiwan’s democratic politics.

This book explores a relatively uncharted area of democratic transitions: the empirical study of intensely politicized transitional societies. In particular, it addresses the problems of protracted democratic transitions that occur when a one-party state has been incompletely dismantled.

Due to an initially smooth political transition from one-party authoritarianism to multi-party politics, Taiwan’s gradual process of democratization has been celebrated as one of the most successful cases of political transformation. However, this political transition was not completed and, especially since 2000 when the first non-Kuomintang president was elected, Taiwan has been marked by protracted political struggles together with an intense politicization of society that persists to this day.

In Taiwan, rather than supporting democracy, many of the political practices associated with representative democracy, such as election campaigning, political demonstrations, vote mobilization and political debate in the media, can appear to undermine the future sustainability of democratic politics through the ways in which they are pursued.

However, the book maintains that institutional flaws are not enough to explain the shortcomings of Taiwan’s democratic politics or those in other transitional democracies. The practices established before the political transition continue to affect politics after the transition. Thus, when an old dominant party like the Kuomintang continues to thrive even after the end of one-party rule, the process of political liberalization and transition contains within itself the seeds of structural politicization.

As such, not only does this study have empirical value – warning that extreme politicization is the main internal threat to the sustainability of Taiwan’s democratic politics – but also its analysis is pertinent to the situations of many other transitional democracies around the world. It will be of interest to scholars and students of Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese and East Asian politics, as well as to those concerned with political developments in other transitional societies.

"Inspired by political anthropology and grounded theory, his work provides a truly novel approach. The investigation is based on extensive ethnographic data from election campaigns and interviews with party actors. It presents a carefully developed argument on the society’s structural politicization, highlighting the imperfect state of Taiwan’s democratic consolidation.

... Mattlin’s book will be of interest to any students of political science, democratization and regional studies focusing on Taiwan, the Greater China region or East Asia. It offers an in-depth analysis of structure; a suggested reading companion would be a publication on agency. This combination would provide a very comprehensive picture of Taiwan’s political development. The argument presented by Mattlin is sophisticated and grounded in thick description. It provides a new perspective on Taiwan’s transition, and will revitalize the debate on the status of its democracy."

Reviewed by Malte Philipp Kaeding, University of Surrey, The China Journal, No. 69

"... in this carefully reasoned and strongly argued book [...], Mikael Mattlin provides one of the most cogent arguments yet that many aspects of Taiwan's democratic consolidation remain incomplete.

... Mattlin provides a promising framework for future analysts of Taiwanese political development.

... This book has much to recommend it (which I do without hesitation). It is theoretically rigorous and marshals an abundance of empirical material based on years of fieldwork conducted in Taiwan. It makes an obvious contribution to the literature on Taiwan, but is accessible enough for a student text. It is also very readable, with many vivid descriptions of political life in Taiwan."

Reviewed by Jonathan Sullivan, The China Quarterly, 209, March 2012

"... provide[s] abundant empirical examples of the friction between vertical and horizontal accountability...

... provide[s] rich examples and keen insights into the dynamics of distinct types of democratic accountability and the variety of ways in which they can clash."

Reviewed by Dan Slater, World Politics, Vol. 65, No. 4, October 2013

"[...] Politicized Society: The Long Shadow of Taiwan's One Party Legacy is a skillfully organized, well written, and sophisticated─but not dense and opaque work of scholarship─that is a wonder for what it is and a gift for what it is not—another heavily statistical and theory-laden tome that seems to be the norm in discipline of modern political science.

(...) Let me say, very simply, that I see the book as very well researched and written and believe that it captures certain hard realities of modern Taiwan that few scholars have dealt with before.

(...) I would hope that this book finds the large audience that it deserves."

Reviewed by Murray A. Rubinstein, Columbia University and City University of New York, Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1

Mikael Mattlin

Formerly lecturing in world politics at the University of Helsinki, Dr Mattlin is a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, specializing in Chinese politics.

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Press news

One of the joys of attending conferences is the chance to meet our authors. Such has been the case here at the AAS in Chicago where yesterday Elisabeth Engebretsen passed by to say hello and do her bit to promote Queer/Tongzhi China, a fabulous volume edited by Elisabeth together with William F. Schroeder.